


Curt Mega's Gotta Catch 'em All (The Bad Guys, That Is)

by perpetualguilt



Category: Spies Are Forever - Talkfine/Tin Can Brothers
Genre: Gen, dont bother asking me why ok i just had the itch to write about spies doing spy things with pokemon, i will update tags as i post more parts. hopefully i write more parts, its spies are forever but its a pokemon au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-12
Updated: 2019-06-12
Packaged: 2019-10-26 22:42:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17754887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perpetualguilt/pseuds/perpetualguilt
Summary: Years after giving up on the spy lifestyle, Curt Mega is called back to action, hoping to put an end to a menace from the past and find closure for the accidental tragedy that haunts him still.... and just maybe he'll be able to open his heart to love and friendship, having spent so long closing himself off in his guilt.Uncovering sinister organizations, chasing danger and the thrill of pokemon battles, rediscovering how to play the game- these are the things that await Agent Mega in the trials ahead. Buckle up: it's time to be a spy again.





	1. Prologue and a fateful day

_He coolly eyed the two trainers blocking his path forward, matching their patient confidence with his own self-assured smirking grin. Amateur troublemakers. Grunts working for the burgeoning underground organization he’d been sent here to investigate. He could tell that they thought they had him cornered, trapped, outmatched— but they’ll be singing a different tune soon enough._

_“You picked a bad place to get lost, my man,” one of the grunts spoke up, the one with the brown cap and the ridiculous moustache. “We have you cornered.”_

_“Trapped!” the other one added unnecessarily, the one with the gray cap and the goggles that were very much a failure of a fashion statement._

_Moustache made a noise in the back of his throat acknowledging Goggles’ eager participation, but in a way that hinted at some mild exasperation he was otherwise doing an admirable job of concealing. He continued._

_“ **And** outmatched. Tell me: do you believe in legends, Mr. Mega? Because there won’t be any wishing on a Ho-oh to save you tonight. Oleg, why don’t you give him something else to wish for?”_

_Oleg (Goggles) stepped forward, clicking his tongue as he readied a pokeball. “Yeah, when I’m through with you, you’ll wish you never stepped foot in here!”_

_Their battle ended hardly a minute later with Oleg being thoroughly thrashed. He staggered back, cradling his unconscious pokemon in his arms._

_“Koffing, no!”_

_Mega cocked an eyebrow pointedly at him. “Maybe you should wish yourself to a pokemon center before your koffing ‘koffs’ its last breath.”_

_As Oleg wept over his pokemon, Moustache sauntered closer to Mega, obviously amused._

_“Well you’re even stronger than your reputation suggests. It would seem you have no need for wishes and legends, eh? But you know, it would really, really, **rrrreally** be nice if you just turned around right now and forgot this whole thing. How about I put this in metaphor: are you sure you’re ready to, how you say, ‘feel the heat’?”_

_Mega only patted the top of his manectric’s head in response. Moustache looked back towards Oleg and tossed another pokeball at his feet._

_“Smoke him, Oleg.”_

_Oleg briefly hesitated to return koffing to its ball, but once he caught a glance of Mega from the corner of his eye he got over it and scooped up his second chance, glaring back with the spark of revenge alighting his determination. And hardly a minute later he held this pokemon in his arms as well, his pride more than a little wounded at this point._

_“Salandit!!”_

_“Your lizard’s not looking so hot, buddy,” Mega taunted. This was too easy._

_“Oh, jeez, enough! Enough of this circus!” Finally having lost his patience for Oleg’s incompetence, Moustache brushed him aside and jabbed a pointer finger in Mega’s direction, a silent gauntlet thrown for their own showdown. “How can you be so cool and collected in the face of certain danger? Huh? Where do you get off-“_

_“Bus stops. Airports. The back of my mother’s rhyhorn after we get home from grocery shopping? My point is, that stopping your organization is one ride I’ll never get off of no matter how many people get in my way.”_

_Both grunts squinted at him, then at each other, extremely confused or even off-put by his words. He did tend to have that effect on people, though sometimes it wasn’t necessarily intentional._

_“Okay, that was not the direction I thought that would be going... But anyway. If that’s how you want to play this game, then let’s play. Oleg, stand back and, uh, try to learn something, why don’t you?”_

_With that, he brought out his persian and a real battle began. Mega didn’t so much have an easy experience with this one. That persian was quick and hard-hitting, and seemed to shake off any effort on manectric’s part to paralyze it. Not only that, but Mega also couldn’t find any opportunity to initiate their well-practiced hail-mary strategy once it was obvious that manectric was taking a walloping, owing to how persian’s aggressive demeanor made manectric so nervous that it refused to break eye contact and wouldn’t respond to Mega’s commands to eat the berry it was holding._

_“Aw, I guess it’s not quite snack time yet for your little friend. That strategy won’t work against me.”_

_Mega paused at that. “Wh- What strategy? What are you-“_

_“Oh, I’m referring to the one where you have your pokemon, on the brink of defeat, eat a berry that supercharges its capabilities for one last hail-mary move. Did I miss anything?”_

_Both their pokemon continued to stare each other down, same as their trainers, muscles coiled and ready to leap back into action upon hearing a command. But the focus had begun shifting away from the battle, and it was in this calmer moment that manectric and persian realized they vaguely recognized the scent of the other._

_“How could you possibly know my plan to that level of detail?”_

_Moustache leered at him like he knew a secret or a joke that he wasn’t sharing, but otherwise kept up an aloof composure._

_“Hm, well, personal history_ does _have its benefits, Mega.”_

=

Former special agent Curt Mega snaps awake and sighs, rubbing his hands up and down his face to wipe away the morning crust and the night’s somber memories. He is slow to roll out of bed, but finally begins the process when he hears tapping on the closed door to his bedroom. From the other side, a sweet little voice chirps:

“Good mor-ning! Good mor-ning! Come get ya break-fast, sweet-heart!”

“Okaaay, thank you...” he calls out in response, half-wanting to just flop back down onto the pillow and sleep more.

But he knows he won’t be able to. Not after one of _those_ dreams. So he gives himself some rousing slaps on the cheek and emerges from his room as ready to face the day as he possibly can be. As soon as he opens the door, chatot hops around excitedly and flies up to perch on his shoulder in a flurry of movement.

“Break-fast!”

“Good morning to you too, Sally.”

He trudges downstairs still wearing the clothes he slept in, though he at least smooths down the parts of his hair that are sticking out in odd directions so as to be halfway presentable.

“There ya are, sleepyhead.”

His mother looks up from what she’s doing in the kitchen as his footsteps fill the quiet; she motions for him to sit down with the same hand that’s holding a cutesy spatula (from the utensil set he bought her for her birthday recently). Two glasses of juice are already set on the table.

“I made berry pancakes. It’s mago, your favorite~”

“Oh, yeah, nice. Uh. Thanks, mom,” he tries to say like a regular adult human who has any degree of enthusiasm for his favorite things anymore. She obviously doesn’t buy it.

“Curtis, honey, what’s the matter? Did ya get enough sleep last night?”

“Ehhhh... No. Not really.”

She pauses for a moment, brief yet noticeable, and so many unspoken thoughts live in that tiny breath.

“Was it that dream again?”

Curt also pauses here. But even if there are some things he can’t bring himself to say to her just yet- things that both are and aren’t related to the question at hand- he isn’t the type to lie to his mother if he can help it.

“...Yeah.”

It’s hard to tell what her initial reaction to that is: she has her back to him while she’s fussing over the plating of their meals. She often worries too much about him, which Curt supposes is a nice trait in a mother, though a bit stifling at times. She really does worry about him. Her only boy, only child, who had once been a part of something great and important during his time at that agency. But he came home grieving and hasn’t been able to stop. It’s been rough to see him this way, to know that a mother can only do so much.

“Well, that’s alright,” she consoles, careful not to let her voice waver. “You’re not dreamin’ anymore.”

Humming some off-tune jazz piece to herself, Curt’s mom finally quits stalling and turns around with their food in hand. She serves him what might qualify as a small mountain, an impressive presentation of 6 pancakes that taper in diameter like a pyramid of delicious. And the whole thing is absolutely laden with mago syrup and dressed with plenty of freshly sliced mago berries. Curt relaxes into a loving smile at how ridiculously over-the-top it looks.

“Now you eat up, okay? And don’t rush or anythin’, but when you’re done, I need ya to run a few errands for me in town. Take Rhonda with ya. Lord knows she could use the exercise.”

Sally the chatot bristles from atop Curt’s shoulder, nudging his cheek with its face in the way it usually does when it wants his attention.

“No, Sally, this is mago. You hate mago.”

Sally stamps its feet and grumbles unintelligibly, clearly displeased.

“You have an entire bowl of your own food over there.”

“Ma-go!”

Without warning, Sally’s wings burst out, slapping Curt in the face several times as it leaps onto the table to steal a berry from his plate and then flutters away to eat before anyone can stop it. Curt’s mother shakes her head dismissively.

“Oh, let that old bird make her mistakes.”

In the many challenges of old age, Sally is constantly forgetting about the unfortunate consequence following a sugar rush. The moment after it swallows its plunder, Sally begins to wobble this way and that. It squawks piteously, dizzy and full of regret as it wanders off in a random direction unable to think _or_ walk straight.

“I told you,” Curt gibes.

=

_**Personal history does have its benefits, Mega.** _

_Something was dawning on him. Something about the delivery of that sentence, something about Mr. Ridiculous Moustache, about how he hadn’t ended the battle despite his clearly proven expertise. Sure, Mega might not have fully connected the dots yet, but he was getting there. He_ would’ve _gotten there, anyway, even if Moustache hadn’t decided to reveal his cards at this exact moment._

_Moustache turned to check on Oleg again (presumably to make sure he was in fact paying attention)._

_“Oleg, we’re finished here.”_

_He whistled to his persian to regain its attention, then slowly raised a hand to point towards Mega._

_“Persian...”_

_Mega subconsciously leaned forward in anticipation, his mind swimming every which way trying to determine how best to counter whatever was about to be coming at him. So it left him fairly stunned when Moustache suddenly changed targets and ordered persian to attack Oleg._

_“...swift!”_

_The impact knocked Oleg to the ground, where he groused and writhed in pain. Satisfied that he’d been sufficiently incapacitated, Moustache ripped off his disguise- that is to say, the moustache and the hat- with a flourish and strutted over to Mega all full of confidence, tossing him a full restore in good faith._

_“Sorry to cut you down, old boy,” he told him, his accent now distinctly of the English variety rather than whatever that other one thought it was imitating. Russian? Whatever. “Thank you for a lovely afternoon of letting off some steam; it was the **combee’s knees.** ”_

_Of course Mega would run into_ him _here._

_“Owen Carvour, you slippery sneasel. I knew it was you all along,” he boasted, falsely, as he bent down to administer the medicine to his manectric. “That accent sure could use some work, though.”_

_“Oh, sod off! It fooled twenty of these small-time losers and our dear friend Oleg over here.”_

_He gestured with his head to where Oleg was attempting to crawl away still stinging from a crushing defeat. He couldn’t crawl fast enough. In fact, all they had to do was walk over to him and block his path._

_“You sure let him go to town on me, didn’t you?” Mega joked as they looked down on him._

_“Yeah, I thought it might be nice to knock you around a bit. Good for the ego. Not that he managed to **do** that. Ohh, Oleg. It seems like your day’s about to get a whole lot worse.”_

_Carvour knelt down and plucked the pokeball containing his salandit from Oleg’s pocket. He took the other one with the koffing inside too for good measure, rolling that one far across the large warehouse-style room they were in. Meanwhile, Mega found Oleg’s wallet and helped himself to a cash prize of everything in it: about 250 bucks. Having given up hope for an escape, Oleg shifted onto his back to face his foes and made a noise of disgruntled bitterness at his predicament. Mega grinned at him while tucking the cash into his jacket pocket._

_“Well! I hope you at least had some fun. I know we sure did.”_

_“What is this? What’s happening?” Oleg asked, to which Carvour and Mega (in that order) rapid-fire delivered their response:_

_“Oh, well you’ve just been used for sport by two of the world’s greatest spies-“_

“-and _I’m about to expose the seedy underbelly of your boss’s whole operation-“_

_“-undoubtedly beating countless grunts like you along the way.”_

_“And though we’ve taken basically everything that you have...”_

_“...you’ll probably be one of the few who escape arrest. If you’re fast enough, that is.”_

_Oleg’s mouth curled into a troubled and even slightly disgusted scowl, his eyes darting back and forth between the two of them. He knew what they were capable of now, knew what kind of people they were- or thought they were. He hated them._

_“So?” he spat out before he could think twice about it._

_The two agents looked at each other like they couldn’t believe their ears, but not so much in a surprised way. More in a disdainful way._

_**“So you’re welcome.”** Mega spat back, and Carvour had his persian whack Oleg on the side of the head to knock him unconscious._

_They advanced further within the maze of a building with Carvour leading the way, descending ever deeper, avoiding lesser confrontations wherever they could in order to save their stamina for greater trials ahead. To say they engaged in excessive peacocking wouldn’t cover half of it; they took more than pride in their work, they took joy in it as well. Curt Mega and Owen Carvour were seriously formidable ace trainers, and even moreso as partners. The two of them worked for different agencies in different countries on different continents, yet they so often gravitated towards each other through something like cartoonish inevitability- except the far-reaching nature of their jobs made frequent run-ins very much possible. Astoundingly, it didn’t matter if one was tracking the other for sport, or their agencies’ agendas aligned or even pitted them against each other. None of that contention impacted the overall strengthening of their bond over the years. They were thick as thieves and always itching to impress._

_Ascending a ladder into a hidden alcove brought them toe to toe with four grunts who had been hanging out, talking about their days and reading magazines. But as soon as Mega and Carvour were spotted, the grunts paired off to surround them, and the agents found themselves back-to-back in a tight spot. Carvour tilted his head more towards Mega’s ear and spoke just loud enough for him alone to hear._

_“I do hope you brought more than one pokemon.”_

_“Of course I did!”_

_“Ah, wonderful. Then try to keep up, old boy.”_

_Even two against one, the odds were easily surmountable for our partners in prime. They blasted their way through the battle knowing that each passing minute was a minute lost and rushed to tie up their foes after overpowering them, but not before one of them managed to hit the fire alarm._

_“Just_ great.”

_As if the situation had known that Mega was hoping it couldn’t get any worse, a few moments later his pokegear informed him that he had a call incoming from his boss, the head of the American Secret Service._

_"Mega,” she fumed through gritted teeth over the phone, “where the **hell** are you?”_

=

Traveling into the city is always nice. When Curt was choosing the location for his safe house, he wanted it to be somewhat out of the way of the main hustle and bustle, not just as a way to maintain secrecy but also because his mother always dreamed of retiring to the countryside. So he’d picked a route with plenty of trees and hilly terrain to please her, and plenty of prime spots to set up his secret base- in case he ever needed to be not too far from home, but not _at_ home.

All this to say: that the trip to and from the city offers a lot to be appreciated, and it’s one of his favorite parts about being home. The clean, fresh air. The pokemon that skitter about their business in the tall grasses. The feeling of comfort that canopies of leaves overhead can provide. Every day that he takes in this sight has been slowly, but certainly, healing his soul.

He and Rhonda the rhyhorn spend the rest of the morning into part of the afternoon checking tasks off of their to-do list. While Curt picks up more medicine for Rhonda’s aching joints, Rhonda finds a patch of garden that’s lined with sizable rocks and lays down to nibble on one. As Curt roams the various grocery stores looking for the month’s supply of canned goods, spices, and cleaning supplies, Rhonda lags behind, staring into shop windows, observing humans in their natural environment. A youngster skipping on the sidewalk makes a diversion to pat it affectionately on the face- with its permission, of course.

Once they’re finished with the errands, Curt makes his own diversions on the way home, first to acquire lunch and then to visit the miltank farm on the same route as theirs but in the other direction. Their distant neighbor, one could say. He buys two bottles for his mother and a half-dozen for himself, and is offered a discount for his next visit if he promises to bring the old lady who runs the place one of his mom’s secret recipes. He never does. She gives him the discounts anyway on merit of ‘being a good son.’

However, while he’s there, he gets the weirdest feeling of being... watched. One of the miltanks keeps looking at him and then looking away, and generally seems a bit off compared to the rest of the herd. But he can hardly begin to imagine why when the old lady hobbles back out of her home to inform him that someone has called her establishment asking for _him._ Definitely alarmed now, he follows her inside.

“Mega! How the hell are you?”

He gapes in shock at the small screen of the front desk’s videophone, unmistakably displaying the image of his former boss from the Agency of Safety and Security (as it has now come to be known), for all of three seconds before he scrambles to block her face and invent some perfectly normal reason why this person decided to contact him from _someone else’s number._

“Oh, yeah, Aunt Cyn- uh, Cindy! She knew I was coming here, annnd I told her to call here if she had, uh, an emergency, because. My phone. Died. Yeah, just give me a- give me a minute.”

He shoves his nose uncomfortably close to the screen and takes the call in a hushed and completely unthrilled tone of voice.

“How did you know I was here, Cynthia?”

“Ohh, **I’m** sorry, were you in hiding or something? Because if so, then you didn’t do a very good job of erasing the location of your secret base from your _employee profile,_ you fucking moron. I told you to take a break and you took four years. You didn’t think I’d be keeping tabs on you?”

“No, no, I didn’t mean here as in this city, I meant _here,_ as in- hang on a sec, you’re-“ Curt pokes his head up briefly to make sure the old lady left the room, which she has- “You’re having me _followed!?"_

“Oh calm your ass down. It’s standard procedure for the first five years, to make sure none of our former agents start spilling secrets. It’s nothing personal. Believe me, I don’t subject myself to weekly reports about your sad, shitty life because I _want_ to.”

Cynthia leans back in her chair to take a long drag of her cigarette while Curt processes the news.

“But anyway, speaking of ‘former agents’, that’s actually what I called to talk to you about. Now, unless you’ve literally been living under that rock of yours this whole time, I’m assuming you’re aware of the steady rise in gang activity on the East Coast.”

“...Yeah? Okay?”

“Well it isn’t just any old gang, Mega. The agency has reason to suspect that it might be the same group from four years ago. The one that got Owen.”

Curt’s veins turn icy cold, and suddenly it’s incredibly hard to breathe with all the extra noise in his heart and knots in his abdomen. He almost tunes out Cynthia as she keeps talking.

“Maybe they’re under new management or some bullshit, changed their name. My point is: we’ve been running on next to no intel because _you_ were so out of your damn mind after that mission, you never filed a proper report. And I get it, I do, okay? But like it or not, you know the most about this.”

“And... what do you expect me to do about it?”

“Come back. Finish what you started. Afterward you and your mother can fuck off to Alola for all I care, but. Curt. You’re the only one.”

He’s sure she can read him like an open book- so much shame and hesitation- which must be why she’s trying to build him up like some sort of hero. There was a time when he would’ve eaten it up, too. But in this moment, understanding that she wants something out of him? Not so much.

“Well, sorry if I don’t entirely believe you,” he objects, unsure of how he should even feel about the opportunity. “You remember what happened last time. I can’t-”

He swallows thickly. Pushes everything back down.

“...Besides, there are plenty of other good agents who could crack that case wide open, so why not give them a chance?”

Cynthia pinches the bridge of her nose, for the most part suppressing an aggravated sigh.

“I _did._ Why do you think it took me four fucking years to call you? You don’t have to believe me, just- listen. I have an assignment with your name on it. Some light recon, nothing too complicated. Get in and get out. _Don’t_ say ‘no’ yet; just think about it. And if you change your mind, there’s a nice 3-star cafe you oughtta try over on 12th Avenue- you know, in Little Hungary? **I hear the salty fish from the river is simply exquisite.”**

 “I’m not really a fan of fish, but thanks for the recommendation.”

“That’s- that’s the code phrase, you f-“

Cynthia stops herself with a grimace, sharply sucking in a breath before trying again.

“I’m putting some faith in you, Curt Mega. You should give that a try yourself.”

The screen goes dark. It takes Curt a few extra seconds to put the phone back onto the receiver because his brain still barely works after that conversation. In the span of a few minutes he’s had his haven of idyllic living invaded, past enemies resurfaced and old wounds reopened, and a choice handed down that could change his life all over again. He doesn’t know what to do. He plucks a bottle of moomoo milk from a random crate behind the counter and drains it in one go. The old lady will find the empty bottle eventually, but he can’t find it in him to care at the moment. He ambles outside, thanks her one more time, and goes home.

=

 _Mega swore he could feel her breathing down his neck through the screen of his pokegear._ Cynthia.

 _“Quit your tom- **fuckery** and get me the identity of the ringleader of that little circus_ immediately.”

_Carvour leaned in over Mega’s shoulder and grabbed his hand to angle the screen towards himself._

_“Consider it done, Cynthia. You can expect that info on the double.”_

_She visibly perked up upon seeing his face._

_“Is that **Owen?** Thank Pokemon God! Someone who actually knows what the hell they’re doing. Your people didn’t tell me you were on this mission.”_

_“Well, there’s a reason it’s called the_ Secret _Service, love- Curt, someone’s coming, duck in here!”_

_The two of them squeezed sideways into a narrow corridor that was already crowded with power cables; their conversation fell silent for a couple of tense seconds as they waited for the other person to go by. The moment Carvour saw movement, he stuck his foot out and the grunt took a hard fall flat on their face, knocking them out. He pulled the pokegear screen close again to flash Cynthia a smile._

_“Maybe someday **your** people-“ -he draped his other arm across Mega’s shoulders and gave him a playful jostle- “-will learn what that means too, eh?”_

_“Funny_ and _focused.” She seemed neutrally pleased, and that’s more than she ever afforded Mega, so you can imagine his opinion about the direction this call was derailing itself towards. “Hey listen, if you ever wanna leave those stuffy redcoats you work for-“_

_“I- I believe they call that treason, my dear.”_

_“Sure. I’m just saying, our door is always-“_

_“Oh, oh no, you’re breaking up, gotta go!” Mega announced out of the blue, and he hung up on Cynthia, wrenching his arm out of Carvour’s grasp. Carvour gave him a funny look._

_“Jeez, are you jealous? You know I’d never work for the Americans.”_

_“Oh I know...” Mega shot back, figuring now was as good a time as any to bring out the bottle of lemonade he’d bought from the lobby’s vending machine earlier, “...that you couldn’t_ handle _it.” He took an angry swig._

_“Aw, what- Curt, no, you can’t wait twenty more minutes for a drink? We’re almost done here. Where did you even-“_

_“-Ooh,_ Curt, _no **lemonade** on the job,” Mega lampooned in his most shrill, scathing rendition of Carvour’s native accent. He then put on a deadpan expression as if to nonverbally communicate ‘let it sink in just how stupid that sounds’ and held out the bottle for him. Carvour rolled his eyes but accepted it regardless._

_After checking the hallway to make sure the coast was clear, they exited from hiding and pressed on, dashing past tricks and contraptions, advancing with surprising expediency thanks to the directional markers painted on nearly every corner of every hallway. But they had to step a little more carefully now as the sprinkler system steadily soaked them to the bone and water pooled in places where there weren’t any grates set into the floor. Two more grunts came at them from opposite sides of the hallway Mega and Carvour were passing and promptly had their aspirations crushed. You get the idea by now._

_Carvour was the first to spot the ominous double doors at the end of the hall. Sensing that the end was fast approaching, he took a moment to extend his arm out to Mega, wanting to express that there were no hard feelings between them._

_“Good show back there.”_

_“Not so bad yourself,” Mega said. He gripped Carvour’s forearm and squeezed tight enough to choke a man. “Now whaddya say we get in there and ruin someone’s life?”_

_“Sounds like a perfect Sunday.”_

_They both, independently of each other, used the handshake as an anchor to pull the other in for a-_

_Mega’s pokegear chimed to announce another incoming call; he and Carvour rather awkwardly stepped away from each other so that he could check the screen._

_“Curt, hello? Do you read me?” asked Barbara’s squeaky voice, though the only thing Mega could see on the screen was the typical chaos of her laboratory in the background._

_“Barb! Ba- Barb?”_

_He heard lots of rustling and then Barbara finally came into view from the left side, carrying a stack of blueprints and the like in her arms. She plopped them down in front of her and began to rifle through._

_“Oooohh, Curt, you’ve had me- a-and_ everyone _at the lab worried sick! Apparently you tripped an alarm or something?”_

_“Got a fire alarm pulled on us. As you can see.”_

_He gestured to his... everything. In the meantime, Carvour silently motioned for them to start walking and talking, and hopefully not get caught in the hallway again. The last thing they needed was for Mega to be weird about his jealousy AND in a position where competitive retaliation could potentially endanger the mission, so Carvour decided to stay out of_ this _exchange as much as he could. They pushed through the double doors to start scoping out the interior, which was at least blissfully dry._

_“Sorry, I haven’t been able to keep track of you since you went underground. You must be in a spot where the connection isn’t so fuzzy.”_

_“Yeah, well it’s the electrical room, where all the- electrical **stuff** happens, so...”_

_“Wait. You’re in the electrical room? That wasn’t part of the plan!”_

_“Screw the plan, Barb, we’ve been made. There’s no way our target is just sitting in his cushy office waiting for us. So! New plan: before he gets away, me and Owen here- say hi Owen.”_

_He briefly twisted his wrist towards Carvour, who stopped prying open access panels long enough to give her a curt wave and then went right back to work._

_**“We’re gonna fry this whole facility.** Buy ourselves some time by shutting it all down.”_

_“But- but what about your mission? We_ need _that photographic evidence.”_

_“And I’m getting to that, I swear. This is just... an extra step in the process.”_

_Barbara dug her fingers into her temple and took a deep, exaggerated breath, then shook her head to clear it a little._

_“Okay, well, do you need me to go over how to operate the camera function on your rotom-dex?” she offered, pumping extra sugar into her voice._

_“The what? Oh, right, this little guy.”_

_Mega pulled out his pokedex, a special model from overseas designed specifically for integration with rotom. Few people had the privilege to test it here in America, and he got to be the first agent to actually take it out on the field. He’d nearly forgotten it was in his pocket. Carvour looked up at the mention of it, wandering over to see what the fuss was about._

_“Sure, uh, what do I press again?”_

_“Simply press its nose and then ask it to bring up the camera!”_

_As soon as he booped it in the approximate region of where a nose would be, it buzzed and sparked and floated out of Mega’s hands, speaking to the two of them through the dex’s speech synthesizer._

_[Bzzzt, bzzzt! Hi there, agentzzz!]_

_“Hi, can you show me the camera thingy?”_

_[Nope!]_

_There was a beat of silence._

_“Oh shoot,” Mega realized, “no-go on the camera, Barb. I forgot I had to delete something to make room for picross. Rotom loves that game- hardly ever lets_ me _play it.”_

_In her state of slowly unraveling from all the stress, Barbara let out a curse. That is: if one can consider ‘criminy’ to be a curse word through any stretch of the imagination. Carvour couldn’t help but chuckle at the chaos that he has come to expect and enjoy from the Americans._

_“Not to worry, my dear,” he told Barbara, whipping out a small disposable camera to show her. “Some things are best done the old-fashioned way, wouldn’t you agree? I’ll have it taken care of. Though you might have to bribe me for the negatives.”_

_He punctuated his last sentence by lightheartedly backhanding Mega’s bicep._

_“Ohh,_ jeepers. _Stay safe, agents!”_

_She ended the call. Mega shoved the rotom-dex back into his pocket after making an offhanded comment to ‘go back to sleep or something’, and then he took another swig of lemonade and brought manectric out to do its part._

_“Are we doing this or what?”_

_Remembering his earlier undertaking, Carvour held up a finger as he scooted around to the other side of the room to rip open more panels._

_“One more moment, love. I bypassed the emergency system for the topmost level to lock down those exits- though there may be others that aren’t in the blueprints- **but,** we should disrupt the circuit breakers as well, to make sure this works as effectively as possible.”_

_“Come on, we don’t have time for this.”_

_“No- Curt,_ trust _me. You’re gonna want to do this, alright?”_

_It cost them another minute, but they managed to find the circuit breaker panels and have manectric chew through the wires. The lights turned off and the emergency lights came on, bathing everything in a dim, portentous red. Nothing prophetic about this at all. No, they were going to succeed the hell out of this mission. Mega and Carvour grabbed on to each other to stay together in the dark; the latter produced a flashlight that didn’t have much range but was serviceable._

_“Okay manectric. G-“_

_“Wait. We’re soaking wet. How about we get out of this room first and_ not _get electrocuted?”_

_Thankfully, the sprinklers had run out of water while they were in there. Mega held one of the doors open with his foot, standing ready to give the order, while Carvour sneaked a few feet over to where the hallways intersected and checked for trouble. He gave Mega the OK._

“Discharge!”

_The moment that manectric lit up the room with waves of frenzied electricity, two ghostly claws drifted out of the wall where Carvour stood and forcefully clamped down onto his shoulders. He vanished around the corner before Mega had any time to react, his flashlight clattering to the ground._

=

Sally’s gentle pecking at his sweaty forehead is what wakes him up today, 20 minutes before the time he’d set for his alarm. Sometimes, whenever the dreams are hitting especially hard, he asks Sally to sing him to sleep. It doesn’t guarantee that he _won’t_ wake up in a cold sweat, but he tends to get a few decent hours this way, at least. The trade-off is that he has to leave his door partially open so that Sally isn’t trapped in his room all night, and Sally is much less polite in the morning when it can just wander in as it pleases.

“Wh- stop! Go away,” he complains, his voice muffled by the comforter. He attempts to swat it away harmlessly, but it ducks to the right and, from his other side, starts to push him off of the bed.

“Good mor-ning! Good mor-ning! O-wen, no!!”

Well **that** got him to sit up and stare.

“...Was I talking in my sleep last night?” he asks aloud, though mainly to himself.

The damndest thing about pokemon is how weirdly sensitive they are to human emotions. Sally might not precisely comprehend the meaning or context of the words it just uttered, but it knows through Curt’s negative reaction that those words are upsetting him. In apology, Sally climbs onto his knee and does its best to make him feel better.

“Tot, tot, tot,” it chitters affectionately. “There there, good boy. Boop.”

It cranes its neck to touch its beak to his nose, but can’t quite reach. Its feathers ruffle and it headbutts Curt’s arm.

“Boop!” Sally demands.

This is one of Sally’s favorite things to do, so he honestly has no choice but to lean down and allow it to kiss him multiple times across his face, because if he doesn’t Sally’ll be mad at him for days. But also: he kind of needs this right now.

“Boop. Boop. Boop boop. B- _oop.”_

Curt is smiling and laughing quietly by the third kiss.

“Okay, okay! That’s- haha- enough. Jeez...  
...Thanks, Sally.”

He washes up and dresses before heading downstairs, a departure from his usual routine. This does not escape his mother’s motherly eye.

“Oh, Curtis, look at _you!_ You’re wearing your old trainer’s belt and everything! Does this mean you’re going to that secret meeting in Little Hungary?”

“Yes. I think so? I haven’t actually decided yet, but, _maybe_.” he says with unearned confidence.

“I think it’s a wonderful idea. What you need is to get out of this stuffy house for a while and enjoy your life! And maaaybe while you’re out there, you might... _y’know..._ meet a cute girl to bring home to ya mother~”

She smiles and pokes him in the ribs.

“Mooom!”

“Whaaat? All I want is for my son to be happy. You can’t be happy all cooped up in your secret base, shuttin’ out the world!”

“Be hap-py!” Sally chirps from the second floor. Curt feels like they’re teaming up on him, and it’s not fair because Sally almost always wins.

“Alright. I’ll go to the meeting.”

“That’s my boy! You’d better get a move-on, then. Don’t forget to pick up your pokemon from the daycare, you hear me?”

“I know, mom.”

“And let me know when you’ll be coming home, if ya can.”

“I will.”

She gives him a long squeeze of a hug to send him off. The kind of hug that starts cutting off circulation below his torso and ventures beyond the line of what qualifies as comfortably long.

“...Mooom.”

“I know, I know. I’m just so proud of you.”

Curt walks to the nearest bus stop at the city limits instead of taking Rhonda. It allows him time to think. He’s been mulling over his thoughts and options since yesterday, but none of it has solidified for him yet as The Decision to make. It comes as no surprise that he’s so reticent to get back into the swing of things after everything that happened. But if returning can help him someway and somehow to offset the tragedy of that night, by doing more good than the misery it created, isn’t it worth it to try? Or he could make things exponentially worse and prove once and for all that he never deserved to call himself an A.S.S. man. One thing’s for certain: all this moping around is getting him nowhere fast.

As he steps onto the bus that will deliver him to a new part of his story, he reaches deep down for the sense of bravado (which is the same thing as bravery, right?) he’d abandoned- or been abandoned by- years ago, thinking it wouldn’t help him anymore. But as an agent in the field, it’s practically part of the standard-issue bag of tricks. So he drags it out of storage and wears it like a name tag, or a mask, whichever will better suit his needs for the mission ahead. He chooses to believe that having to hop off the bus about halfway to his destination to dry-heave behind the bus stop awning is... only a _minor_ hitch along the road to putting himself back together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading!
> 
> ===
> 
> i am largely flying by the seat of my pants with this one. im mashing together two things with vastly different tones (and meant for different age groups) and basically trying to have them meet in the middle, so if the tonal shifts seem all over the place, its because they are haha. but despite the levity from the pokemon part of this, the SAF part of this means it isnt for young kids, so im not putting this in the pokemon tag for that very reason. or maybe it IS alright to tag it as pokemon since i have this listed as teen and up? im still tryin to decide
> 
> anyway i think this is also gonna follow the musical pretty closely (even word-for-word in some places) except wherever i need to deviate in order to incorporate the pokemon universe. its a challenge im excited to puzzle out but also daunted by. but hey thats nothing new for me
> 
> this is happening for no reason other than i WANT to write it so i WILL


	2. Part One: If at first you don't succeed, spy, spy again

Hovering near the entrance to a tiny but distinguished cafe in Little Hungary’s corner of town (which is more just a handful of buildings along a single road), Curt anxiously strokes his beard and adjusts the pokeballs on his belt for the dozenth or so time. He’s having second and third and **fourth** thoughts about going inside, a fun little emotional journey that everyone walking past him on the sidewalk gets to catch a glimpse of. _Curt Mega, the disgrace,_ they would think, or so Curt imagines they might think if they had any idea who he is. Who he was.  
  
He has to do _something_ here. Right now he’s just spinning wheels to no effect, metaphorically.  
  
“Stop it, Mega,” he mutters to himself, just loud enough for another passerby to twitch their head towards him in confusion and then decide to keep going, slightly faster. “You can do this. It’s just recon.”  
  
He straightens his posture, checks his coiffed hair in the window’s reflection, pulls the door open... and falters three steps in because his eyes have to adjust to the sudden change from bright, sunny outside to gloomy, candle-level illumination on the inside. The floors and walls and furniture are all made from various types of dark stained or painted wood; the shades on every window have been drawn shut, severely shrinking the already crowded atmosphere; the oppressive warmth from the candles, incense and perfumes used to make the space inviting mingles with sweetly spicy smoke which occasionally curls through a curtained opening behind the main counter that must lead to the kitchen. All in all, it’s equal parts cozy and claustrophobic, and if that’s by design then the owners of this place have truly excelled in their vision.  
  
There are only three other people in the main area, _including_ the man working behind the counter who hasn’t noticed him yet, plus a saggy-looking victreebel sitting in a plant pot in the corner. And this is when it occurs to Curt that Cynthia never told him what the informant looks like. Okay. This is still fine, he’ll just- improvise. He pretty much already fits the bill of a lost, clueless sightseer acting like a magikarp out of water, so why not run with that? Besides, the code phrase is innocuous enough (as it’s meant to be) that he feels like he can get away with passing it off as tourist curiosity.  
  
Well that doesn’t pan out quite the way he’s expecting it to. He says the phrase aloud to anyone who’s listening, and a tiny lady with a head scarf stands up and smacks him before storming outside- offended somehow??- leaving her breakfast half-finished. The counter attendant, cleaning various objects in a state of utter apathy, finally sees him smarting and acknowledges him with an underlying wariness that Curt mistakes for a covert sign. So he says the phrase again to this man.  
  
“Excuse me? **What** did you just say to me?”  
  
“What- no, I wasn’t-“  
  
“Oh wait, is that like one of them fancy drinks? We don’t serve those here.”  
  
Curt’s shoulders sag a little bit. How is he having such rotten luck already? He orders a random drink from the menu to keep up appearances and retreats to a table, one near the only other person in this room just in case _that’s_ the one he’s been making a fool of himself to find. A few minutes later, as Curt continues angling to approach that person discreetly, a waiter steps out from an alcove Curt didn’t notice before to deliver a menu, sporting a wide, kinda goofy grin that Curt mistakes for knowingness. And the third time **is** the charm, as they say.  
  
“I... hear the salty fish from the river is simply exquisite,” he tries.  
  
The waiter leans in conspiratorially.  
  
_“...Ditto.”_  
  
Relieved, Curt sits back in his chair to decompress. Maybe he’s not as rusty as he feared.  
  
“Geez, man, I didn’t think you’d be so difficult to find!”  
  
“D-ditto!”  
  
Huh? Why would I be-? Doesn’t matter, let’s just hurry up and do this so I can get to _my_ part of the job. Speaking of people doing their jobs: where’s my drink?”  
  
Perfectly on cue, an all but shrieking voice comes from Curt’s blind spot, startling him so badly he practically jumps out of his seat:  
  
_“One very cheri milkshake for table four! Vic-treeee-!”_  
  
The victreebel has migrated from its pot over to where Curt is sitting; up close, it looks so much less convincing as a costume that Curt wonders how he ever mistook it for the real deal. A head pokes out from the mouth- the human head of a human guy who, by the way, looks **exactly** like the waiter that’s still standing there smiling blithely at Curt, as if this scene wasn’t already bewildering enough- and he winks as he hands Curt a styrofoam cup and a straw. Curt does something like a double-take, choking on his words for a second and then casting not-so-furtive glances around the room.  
  
“Holy- are you insane, man!? Are you- are you twins? What is this?“  
  
“Oh I wish, but no: that’s just my talented little assistant and partner in crime-fighting, ditto.”  
  
The guy blows the ‘waiter’ a kiss and ditto’s whole body sort of... _wiggles_ in response. It’s deeply upsetting. This must be the real informant then, Curt regrets to have discovered. At least he isn’t using that grating accent anymore.  
  
“I’m very happy for the two of you,” says Curt, dry and unamused even by his own jab. “Now can we try to keep it down? We’re surrounded by civilians.”  
  
“Ah, that’s right: _bel-bel, I’m a victreebel!!”_  
  
“Will you- _stop_ doing that!?”  
  
“Loosen up; these people don’t see what’s right in front of them because they aren’t looking for it. They don’t know _what_ to look for. They’re not like you and me, right?”  
  
And it’s true that neither of the unrelated people in the cafe have paid them so much as a sideways look- a far cry from when Curt’s attempt at acting casual earned him not one but two unfortunate social encounters. Okay, so maybe he _is_ a smidge rusty after all. Who could blame him? It’s certainly been a while since he’s had to do all this. _Be grateful for the opportunity, be grateful for the opportunity,_ he thinks to himself, biting down on a grimace.  
  
“Fine, what’ve you got for me?”  
  
” _Thank_ you.” The informant retreats into the costume, manipulating the green appendages that resemble only a parody of what vines actually are to gesture over to ditto, who dutifully shoves the menu into Curt’s hands. “If you will carefully peruse the menu to see what we have to offer you this fine morning.”  
  
Curt can barely make out the instruction on account of how muffled the informant’s voice is through the costume, but this isn’t his first rodeo and he could’ve figured it out from context clues anyway, and so he decides he’s not feeling petty enough to mention it. This is his ‘welcome back’ mission, but he isn’t really ‘back’ yet until he passes Cynthia’s test to her satisfaction, which is no easy feat. Surely he’s being hazed or something. Whatever the case may be, he’s willing to consider not strangling the informant as part of the test.  
  
He takes the menu, positions himself away from any potential prying eyes, and cracks it open. All the contents fall out onto his lap and the floor. He briefly reconsiders his stance on strangulation.  
  
“Gah- seriously! You can’t- just leave top secret documents _lying around-_ where anybody can see them!” Curt yell-whispers as he hurriedly scoops up the documents before anyone else notices. The informant doesn’t even bother pretending to act like he cares about whether or not this was an egregious misstep on his part. “You couldn’t have just... I don’t know, emailed them to me or something instead??”  
  
“Uh, they’re _top secret,_ so no. Trust me, sir, we have this under control. That file in your hands is the only one that exists in the entire world. Be sure to read it carefully, because you have to burn it when you’re done.”  
  
Their conspiring grinds to a halt as the only other patron of this establishment turns to tap on the waiter’s arm and solicit his attention.  
  
“Pardon me-“ -she refers to her menu while she speaks- “-but I’m having a hard time deciding between the _‘reconnaissance mission to be conducted at the bayside loading dock’_ and the _‘stealth should take priority, engage only as a last resort’._ What would you recommend?”  
  
Curt’s gonna do it. He’s gonna- He clenches his jaw and stares maliciously into the victreebel’s maw at the same time that the waiter shrugs and stares vacantly at the customer.  
  
“Di...tto?”  
  
Several seconds of silence pass. Then the customer hands the menu over, satisfactorily decided.  
  
“Well alright then, I’ll have the two!”  
  
She goes back to not paying any attention to them. Ditto slides closer to Curt’s table again clutching the menu as if it’s just betrayed them all and, in TOO MUCH of the literal sense of the word, deflates.  
  
“Ohhhh, buddy. We really need to coordinate better next time,” the informant admits, resting his arms and chin on the lip of the victreebel. **“But** she is none the wiser! You see?”  
  
Curt has just about run out of patience in the meantime.  
  
“Listen. In all my years, I have _never_ worked with someone as careless as you.” He looks over at ditto. “Or had as bad of a waiter as _you.”_  
  
Both of them seem downright offended by his words, like they have any right to be.  
  
“I am not careless, _buster_. I am a master of disguise, as is my associate over there. And _we_ have never been caught. Nope! Our record is squeaky clean. No infractions, no tardies... no **mysterious partner disappearances.”**  
  
Any high ground or sense of superiority Curt felt justified in having vanishes instantaneously. Yeah, he deserved that one. He knows that the informant can see it written all over his face.  
  
“Oh, hmmm, yes, your reputation precedes you, Curt Mega. I make sure I do my homework before meeting contacts out in the wild. How about you?”  
  
The scales of this encounter have tipped completely out of Curt’s favor now, and the informant is really playing it up with a rude glee. It’s made worse by the fact that he’s wearing that childishly silly getup as he talks down to Curt- well, figuratively, since he’s having to talk _up_ to Curt in the literal sense. Curt’s shaken silence is the only response he needs to keep going.  
  
“And- remind me: how long has it been since you’ve been in the field? Three years?”  
  
“...Four,” Curt corrects him, struggling to say even that.  
  
“Four. After four years, why come back at all? Still have something left to prove?”  
  
Silence again. Curt picks up the straw, unwraps it, and violently jabs it into the lid of his milkshake.  
  
“How disappointing,” the informant croons, shaking his head. “I was looking forward to working with ‘the great Curt Mega’...”  
  
“Ditto.”  
  
“...but it seems you’re not that man.”  
  
‘That man’ does seem like an unattainable ideal now, Curt admits to himself. A past life that can only be fondly remembered (to a point) but never relived, revived, regained. That won’t stop him from doing his darnedest to become that old self again anyway, against reason and against better ways of dealing with his losses. He’s spent too long hiding in his cave, feeling like nothing. A quitter. A failure. He longs to feel _important_ again. And, like with this stagnant period in his life, he also longs to be done with this meeting already.  
  
Curt takes a lengthy hit off of his milkshake. “Neither of you are getting a tip,” is the only retaliation he can come up with in that time. _Great. Cool. Sick burn, Mega._  
  
“How about I give _you_ a tip?”  
  
The informant stands up fully, the entire upper half of his body now sticking out of the victreebel costume, and he grips Curt’s shoulder like he’s about to share a secret. But he speaks louder than polite conversational volume and in a tone laden with sarcasm and derision.  
  
“Your _special pokegear_ for _special agent spies_ is hidden in the flowerpot, along with your _agency assigned_ pokemon team. Oh, and Cynthia left you a _**secret** note!_ It’s taped to the bottom of your milkshake! _Vic-treee- **bel!”**_  
  
Then he hops the rest of the way out of costume and kicks it under Curt’s table, making sure to catch Curt in the shin a time or two.  
  
“Let’s go, ditto. In fact: cashier! You’re on break.”  
  
The counter attendant snaps out of his daze, sets down his dish rag without even finishing up the glass he was in the middle of cleaning, and wanders off.  
  
“You, lady, if you’ll please come with me for a tour of the kitchen.”  
  
“Oh, fun! Are you two twins?”  
  
The only other customer allows herself to be whisked away into the kitchen by the waiters, leaving Curt by himself in the seating area of the cafe. He sits in silence for a very long time. Reminiscing. Thinking too much. Sipping his milkshake. Oh, right, the note. He lifts the cup until he can just see the bottom and then carefully peels off the folded piece of stationery. It reads:

  
  
Welcome back, agent.  
Don’t fuck it up or I’ll  
kick your ass myself.  
              ;)  
  
      - Cynthia

  
  
Dejected, he tosses it on the table to join the rest of the loose disarray of pages. Might as well get to work studying those mission files.  
  
How quickly time flies when you fill it with a lot of doing nothing at all. It’s been four long, short years since the worst day of his life, with so many days in between throwing in their nomination for second place. He’d even vowed to himself on more than one occasion to never take on another mission again after his life-shattering debacle. He’d given Cynthia his ID card, sent his pokemon away to day care when it became obvious that he was too upset to care for it himself (and his mom- bless her- already had her hands full with four aging pokemon of her own). He worked a number of mundane jobs as a regular citizen to keep himself busy, all of them short-lived. He tried to meet people, tried to ‘make friends’. Nothing stuck; he crashed and burned so hard at being a functional person. The only reason he showed up to this cafe at all is because he still holds some naive hope that there’s some course of action out there that’ll put him on the path to forgiving himself. He’ll never be able to redo that day, but if he can recapture the feeling of success, if he can just do it _better_ this time, perhaps there could be a brighter future for him yet. He’ll finally be able to forget...  
  
No. How could he? That wouldn’t be fair to Owen’s memory. Curt has conflicted thoughts about what he wants out of this, actually. On the one hand: remembering equals pain and pain means wasting his life wallowing at mom’s house, hating his own reflection to the point that he grows a beard to hide behind, and is that a dignified way for someone to be remembered? But on the other hand: should he be so eager to leave the past in the past when it was entirely his fault that things happened as they did? Wouldn’t it only be right to keep stoking the fires of shame and regret so that it won’t ever happen again- or is he setting himself up to get burned? Which one would Owen have wanted for him?  
  
Curt runs out of milkshake. He roots around in his duffel bag for the last bottle of moomoo milk and pops the top off. It’s fair to say that he has managed to become a bit addicted to the stuff, mainly for the refreshing, heart-soothing properties it imparts. Though in constantly drinking it he’s built up a sort of tolerance to the effects over time, leading to him having to drink more and more in order to feel good at all, and drinking _too_ much in one sitting so often leads to the exact opposite effect than the one desired. He straddles a cruel, uncertain line every time he endeavors to self-medicate these days.  
  
Alright. He’s starting to notice some confidence coming back to him. That’s more like it. Yeah! He’s been on missions exponentially more dangerous than this one. He’ll be fine. Assured of his decision, Curt gets up and retrieves his gear from the wide ceramic flowerpot. The technology looks to have gotten an upgrade since last he saw it, if the sleeker interface is any indication- and hey, the agency even saw fit to include his old ID card in this little care package, with the addition of a thick beard hastily scribbled in permanent marker over Curt’s face. He can’t tell if it’s meant to helpfully reflect his new grooming choices or if it’s making fun of him, but he _chooses_ to believe the former.  
  
As he turns around, his eyes catch sight of a square mini-fridge installed under the bar’s prep area; through the glass panel on the door he spies two bottles of moomoo milk, one unopened and one partially depleted. Well well, what a fortuitous find. He invites himself behind the counter, chugs the rest of the open one and takes the other one for the road. And if anyone notices what’s missing, they can feel free to take it out of- of **that guy’s** paycheck. Whatever that guy’s name is. Anyway: he’d like to wrap up his business here before anyone returns, so, as much as it would benefit him to play with the pokegear and bring out all of his pokemon to see what he’s working with, he’s gotta get a move-on. He drops the files into the flowerpot, uses a nearby candle to set them aflame; then he’s back on the sidewalk trying to find the map function while he determines his action plan like a professional.  
  
Underneath it all, bits and pieces of that day four years ago are steadily resurfacing, lurking in the back of Curt’s thoughts and tinging his mindset with a sour note.  
  
=  
  
_“Owen, **no!”**_  
  
_Mega’s feet started moving before he had any semblance of an idea what he was going to do about this._  
  
_“Ma-Manectric, after him!”_  
  
_Thankfully, manectric was much faster. It raced out of the electrical room and bolted down the hallway, charging the air with static current in its wake. The way it prickled at Mega’s skin matched the way that his heart was beating so erratically he swore he was 2 seconds away from going into shock at any given moment. The prickling actually helped remind him_ not _to let that happen, because then he wouldn’t be able to rescue his partner._  
  
_Up ahead, he witnessed the flash of a pokeball and Carvour straining to shout. Giddy laughter, coming from what Mega could now recognize as a haunter, turned into a pained shriek the very next second- and the second after_ that _, a little blue blur streaked down the hall too quickly for manectric to avoid crashing into it. Manectric did not enjoy being surprise-attacked even unintentionally. Its temper flared, its mane doubling in size and crackling with electricity. As it so happens, the blur had been Carvour’s clauncher, ejected from combat like a piece of seafood gone bad; the tiny thing skittered around and snapped its claw menacingly at manectric’s aggressive display._  
  
_“Quit playing around! We’re losing them!”_  
  
_In those wasted seconds, Carvour more or less saved himself by offering haunter a few pieces of hard candy in exchange for his release. If that seems disappointingly anticlimactic, I’d like you to conjure in your mind the image of him being rapidly abducted down a dark, faintly red-lit passage and, after watching one of his pokemon get launched into the abyss, electing to change tactics and take the gamble that this haunter was a capricious creature. It wasn’t that far of a reach: so many of them are pranksters driven by their whims. All he needed to do was direct its attention to something else, or so he hoped... and that instinct proved correct. Haunter stopped cold, inspected the candy suspiciously at first, but then swiped the whole lot and backed away ten feet to try one. Upon being released, Carvour landed hard on his stomach and elbows but made no move to get up yet, just in case doing so would incite a Round Two._  
  
_Of course, that’s when Mega finally caught up._  
  
_“Manectric, hit it with a-“_  
  
_**“Don’t!”** Carvour twisted around to throw his palm out as a warning. “The floor is still covered in water; you’ll electrocute us _all.”  
  
_Just because he was technically definitely extremely right didn’t mean Mega had to be happy about it._  
  
_“But the-“_  
  
_The words faltered in his throat as both of them noticed that haunter was gone. It was as much a comfort as it was worrying._  
  
_“Ah, crud. Where did that thing even come from?”_  
  
_“Well,” Carvour exhaled as he began to push himself off the ground, “I’d rather not stick around to find out.”_  
  
_Mega helped him up the rest of the way, his ulterior motive being to get in a pithy and dramatic hug that he felt was overdue._  
  
_“I’m glad you’re alright,” he said, clapping Owen on the shoulder a few times. “And I’ll be even more glad once we’re back above ground."_  
  
_“Same here. Oh, by the way: where’s my clauncher?”_  
  
“Riiight, _right, right.”_  
  
_Unzipping his puffy coat revealed one indignant, suffocated clauncher, which they had just squashed even further in their hug. Pissed beyond apology, its large claw lashed out at the first body part of Mega’s that it saw- only to be thwarted when recalled back to its pokeball, its dream of revenge unfulfilled for now. Mega also returned manectric to its ball, heeding those earlier words of caution. For the purpose of getting his bearings, Carvour surveyed another set of double doors at the end of the hallway they were now in. No identifying labels... in addition to no clear markers at the intersection to indicate where they were currently located..._  
  
_“Say, could I have a peek at the map for this section?”_  
  
_“Sure, hold on.” Mega brought it up on his pokegear and showed him. “Uhhh... I don’t know exactly where we ended up after making all those turns, though.”_  
  
_“From the electrical room-_ here _\- it was an immediate right, left at the second crossing, then another left. Here. And those doors are...”_  
  
_“Huh. They don’t exist in the floor plan.”_  
  
_“So either these maps are outdated-“_  
  
**_“-Impossible-“_**  
  
_“-or the omission is intentional.”_  
  
_They smirked at each other, oozing with self-congratulatory egotism._  
  
_“Bingo. I bet you anything that’s where we’ll find our guy. Get your camera ready Owen; it’s looking like a good day for an impromptu photo op.”_  
  
_“One step ahead of you, old man.”_  
  
_They got maybe ten feet closer before, out of the blue, Mega asked:_  
  
_“What’s our record?”_  
  
_“Huh?”_  
  
_“It was, uh, that German region, last spring. We got in and out of there in what, 60 minutes?”_  
  
_Carvour narrowed his eyes at him. “I don’t like that look in your eyes. **Yes,** 60 minutes.”_  
  
_“Oh you_ love _it,” Mega countered, grinning mischievously (very much resembling the haunter in a way). “We’re just about to pass the 30-minute mark. So, whaddya say: y’think we can do it in 50?”_  
  
_Neither one of them could ever back down from a challenge once one of them spoke it into existence. Nor could the other ever seem to resist raising the stakes for the fun of it._  
  
_“...Make it 45.”_  
  
_“Attaboy!”_  
  
_As Carvour turned away, Mega set a timer for 15 minutes. And then reduced it by 5. All they had to do was snap a few stupid pictures, how could that possibly take more than 10 minutes?_  
  
_“ **40** it is,” he said only to himself._  
  
_Beyond the doors was a spacious mezzanine overlooking an extensive layout of desks and cubicles from two stories above it all, which they could just barely see thanks to the strips of light running along the base and crown of the walls; the rightmost side of the mezzanine featured one steep staircase that looked more like a retrofitted fire exit. The whole area had that similar makeshift appearance, in fact- complete with a stark prefab warehouse office on the opposite end of where they stood- quite unlike the rest of the building. A real ‘center of operations’ vibe. They stealthily crept up to the railing to get a better view._  
  
_Several office-type fellows were huddled over a laptop, bickering. Even more stood, talked, or paced, scattered in a disorderly fashion around the room. Every once in a while, someone nervously glanced up at the double doors, but our two agents entered at just the right moment to have done so undetected. Though the blinds on the warehouse office’s massive windows were drawn shut, one of the people inside was using a flashlight that allowed Mega to count three silhouettes. Then one of those silhouettes followed the other one out of the office and towards the gathering._  
  
_“That’s him,” Mega whispered. “That’s him!”_  
  
_“Yes, I can see that,” Carvour whispered back. “I’m here for him too, remember?”_  
  
_He settled into a more comfortable position, adjusted his framing through the camera lens, zoomed in, zoomed out a little bit to alleviate the blurriness, double-checked that the flash was off. Made the tiniest frustrated noise._  
  
_“What’s the holdup?”_  
  
_“This lighting isn’t great. I’m not sure I’ll be able to get a clear shot from up here.”_  
  
_“And? You wanna get_ closer??”  
  
_“Of course not. That’s a terrible idea.”_  
  
_“Just do what you can. As long as we walk away with something, what does it matter? But... maybe hurry it up a little bit.”_  
  
_“I’m working on it.”_  
  
_*snap*_  
  
_*snap*_  
_*snap*_  
  
_Feeling overwhelmingly antsy due to having no part to play in the job that was supposed to be his own, Mega downed the final few ounces of his lemonade and let the empty bottle roll away from him. He noticed Carvour side-eyeing him like he’d just witnessed him spit on a lillipup or something._  
  
_“What? This place is one big glorified garbage can anyway.”_  
  
_Carvour only shook his head in reply._  
  
_*snap*_  
  
_“Are you done yet?”_  
  
_*snap*_  
  
_“I’m. **working.** on it. He’s being obscured by the other people around him. It’s hard to find a decent angle.”_  
  
_“Let me take a shot at it.”_  
  
_“Oh, by all means, be my guest Mr. Shutterbug.”_  
  
_Mega chose to ignore the vicious sarcasm in his companion’s voice. He commandeered the camera and tried taking his own pictures- ‘tried’ being the operative word here._  
  
_*snapsnap*_  
  
_*snap?*_  
  
_“Okay, wait-“_  
  
_*snap!*_  
_*sn-_  
  
_The sound of his alarm going off startled him so badly they almost lost their evidence through the bars of the railing. But amazingly their combined fumbling somehow delivered it back into Carvour’s jacket pocket, where at least_ it _might remain a secret even if_ their _cover has just been blown._  
  
_**“What** was that??” Carvour exclaimed incredulously at the same time that the Boss downstairs shouted “Intruders! Capture them!”_  
  
_“It’s- I set a timer when we were talking about how long this would take and I_ completely _forgot to turn the sound off.”_  
  
_The stampede of footsteps grew closer._  
  
_“You... Nevermind, just run!”_  
  
_They sprinted for the door; unfortunately, it swung open a half-second later and three goons barged in, blocking their only way out. Three more made it up the stairs. Now backed into a corner in all meanings of the phrase, Mega and Carvour readied themselves for the only option left: fighting their way out._  
  
_“Ohhhh Curt Mega, I **swear** , you’re going to be my downfall someday,” muttered Carvour not without some bitterness and tension behind his words, but the tame kind that was the product of having put up with Mega’s antics for this long more than it was the result of true anger._  
  
_“No way. You know I’d never let you down.”_  
  
=  
  
Foot traffic at the bay’s beachside park is always scarce on weekdays, even more so in the late morning- which works out perfectly where Curt is concerned. It means less witnesses to witness him breaking into the restricted part of the bay, the docking facility for small cargo vessels. You’d think this is the kind of thing that the government could grant him easy access to, but his agency wants to keep these early-stage investigations somewhat hush-hush so as not to have any bureaucratic nightmares holding them back, especially if there’s a possibility that purported criminal activity in government-operated zones may be indicative of larger corruption _within_ the government. Blah blah, additional boring stuff. Is all this sneaking around slightly illegal? Yes. Yes it is. 90 percent of what Curt does- _used to do_ \- would be illegal if it wasn’t sanctioned by the government. So, moral of the story: if you want to do legal crimes, work for the government (or for its friends), apparently.  
  
This just... happens to be one of those Cynthia-sanctioned _illegal_ crimes.  
  
Curt picks the frankly archaic lock on one of the side entrances and slips inside. The walls and floor are a dystopian white-painted concrete that glows sickly bluish green from the fluorescent lighting, sparse as it is. Endless stretches of pipes of every size, organized cables, and wires line the walls of a hallway so narrow that two people would barely manage walking side-by-side in it. He’s vividly reminded of his brief time on a submarine- and not the _good_ parts. No floor plans for him this time; the mere act of requesting info unnecessarily like that posed too much of a risk of being found out and shut down. He creeps down the hallway, following directional markers painted on the walls while listening intently for hints of movement. He can hear a saucy voice in the back of his head saying: _“You sure you want to be going this way, old man?”_  
  
“If you have a better idea, I’m-“  
  
**_...No._ **He thought he’d gotten past this already. He _needs_ to get past it, because this is not the time or place. He smacks himself in the face a few times as if there’s some ‘activate spy mode’ button hidden beneath his beard. There isn’t.  
  
Sensing someone coming, Curt tucks himself into a shadowy recess between some sideways-stacked rolling pallets and holds his breath. He’s far from undetectable, and really it’s only a step up from standing completely still in the _middle_ of the hallway, but the person passing him happens to be too lost in their own thoughts to turn their head slightly to the left and notice him. He tiptoes out once they’ve rounded the corner, puts his ear to the door they came out of (labeled **2—11: Tech. Stor.** ). Quiet. It’s as good a place as any to start.  
  
Well, no incriminating secrets in that one- though he does nab a strong pocket flashlight, so he can return the other one in his possession to his mom when he gets the chance. He’s reaching for the doorknob when two voices fade into range from down the hallway. Curt goes still; he locks the door from the inside and presses his ear against it again. He only catches the middle part of an ongoing conversation but what he hears is _very_ promising:  
  
“-ired of bein’ his lackey, you know? Sick and tired of it! I’ve just as many wins under my belt as he has, but does anyone ever recognize _my_ efforts? _My_ loyalty? No! Instead, Mr. ~Dark and Mysterious~ gets to be admin in record time because the boss likes _him_ more. It’s unfair, I tell you.”  
  
“Hold on a tick,” the other voice interjects, and their footsteps stop just after passing Curt’s door. “You do realize he’s won one thousand, one hundred and forty-seven battles, yeah? How many’ve you won?”  
  
“One thousand, one hundred and forty-six as of yesterday.”  
  
“Ehhhh, it’s still one less.”  
  
“You havin’ a go? Huh?? If you’re that itchy to start something, I’ll gladly put you in your place right now, tie up my score _properly.”_  
  
“You- You know it wouldn’t count if it’s not part of a job.”  
  
“I think keeping you in line **is** part of my job!”  
  
“Alright, alright, I get it. Let’s just get down to the docks before the admin does both of us in. He’s already in a sour mood. Who knows what he’ll do if we’re late?”  
  
“Pah. He’s welcome to try...”  
  
Their footsteps resume, vanishing off in the same direction that the other person had been going earlier. There’s some sort of secret meeting taking place with a dark and mysterious admin in this very building? Now _that’s_ what experts in the business might call... a **lead.** Intrigued, Curt waits for another minute or two to pass, cracks the door open to peek out, and then trails after his new targets to catch a front-row seat to the event.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks to all for your patience. i made the mistake of trying to do too many writing projects at once, so this one took much longer than i thought it might, haha. but i oughta let you know that further chapters may take similar lengths of time- a month or more- to be posted depending on the waxing and waning of my interest
> 
> not to mention the OTHER fic ideas i was working on simultaneously. who knows if i'll ever get around to posting those...


	3. Part Two: All it takes is a few missteps to invent a new dance

Down a steep, cramped set of stairs, the vessel area awaits. It’s a massive room largely occupied by the pool of water which laps in from the ocean outside through a thick metal gate at the far end (currently half-raised). Fresh salty air and grayish water churn perpetually against the hulls of ships, coaxing them to creak and sway in an asynchronous drone. The part of the room that _isn’t_ water is structured like a dock, designed to receive no more than a dozen small watercrafts- though despite being a dock in which cargo is loaded and unloaded, it is not itself a loading dock (like the one on the other side of this building that receives and delivers whatever cargo comes through here). Nor is it a loading bay despite being situated along the bay, _nor_ is it a docking bay despite resembling a warehouse bay in which boats are docked. As far as Curt’s interest goes, the label he would give this place is: _location of very suspicious gathering, full stop._  
  
The stairs lead right into the vessel area with no door to separate him from anyone who might spot him, so he hangs back a few steps and only dares to steal a glance around the corner when his targets’ silence starts unnerving him. Thankfully, he sees only what he expects to see. The two Galar fellows are hunched in on themselves to brace against the cold, watching the doors expectantly. And there’s the third one- Curt assumes he’s the aforementioned admin, ‘Mr. Dark and Mysterious’, and he definitely fits the moniker- sitting at the edge of the dock observing the waves. Hints of a black hooded wetsuit peek out from under his clothes, and as he kicks at approaching waves he occasionally leans down to interact aggressively with something in the water. Curt can’t see that what he’s doing is passing the time playing tug-of-war with a sharpedo and a random piece of rebar he found lying on the ground.  
  
After a few more minutes of waiting, one of the lackeys shakes his head.  
  
“This don’t feel right.”  
  
Curt recognizes his voice as the disgruntled and opinionated one from that conversation he overheard.  
  
“Yeah, wasn’t he supposed to be here by now?” the other one pipes up.  
  
“Sergio will be here.” The admin flings the heavy rod out into the middle of the pool, where it’s immediately snatched up like a chew toy and thoroughly mangled by the sharpedo- which Curt definitely hears but still can’t see from this angle. “If he knows what’s good for ‘im.”  
  
The wide double-door entrance squeals open; in rushes a wired, gangly man whose attire smacks of someone who once heard that he should dress for the job he wanted and he chose ‘early retirement’. Or it _would_ , if his nervous energy didn’t entirely negate the look he’s trying to cultivate. He’s carrying a bulky protective case in one hand and a bakery box in the other.  
  
“Ay-i-yi-yi-yi, my guys, oh man, I am **never** underestimating traffic during the lunch hour rush again. It is crazy out there. I had to park like 3 blocks away, that’s how nuts it is! And it’s like, you know, you think you found a closer spot but it turns out some kid parked their bicycle there and you almost smash _right_ into it and-“  
  
His stream of consciousness falters once he notices the others staring at him. Curt watches the admin stand up to acknowledge the newcomer (Sergio, Curt goes ahead and guesses), but he doesn’t get to put a face to the admin’s name on account of the sleek, dark-tinted diving goggles covering a large portion of his features- except for his mouth, which twitches ever further into a sneer.  
  
“Good of you to finally show up.”  
  
Sergio smiles apologetically at the three of them. “Yeah, of course, you know I’d never skip out on you guys. Sorry I’m late, though. I’m just- I’m having one of those days, man. It’s hard enough trying to juggle work and life on a _good_ day, but ohh buddy, I gotta say, I really- 'brought a grass type to a fire fight,' you know what I’m talkin’ about?”  
  
“...Not really. But-“  
  
“I’m a great husband, okay? I know I seem like a stereotypical ‘tough guy on the streets’, but deep down I’m a real softie. My wife? I _love_ that woman, I’d do anything for her. And I do all these illegal deals with dangerous people- and- and I mean that as a compliment, mister mysterious guy- but, I do it all to provide for her. My whole family, really, but mostly her. So today happens to be our wedding anniversary, and as I woke up this morning I thought to myself: ‘Oh. Oh Sergio, don’t tell me you scheduled that business meeting on the same day as your _anniversary_. Tell me it's tomorrow, yeah? But nooope! So that’s where I’m at right now! I’ve been running around like a crazy person all morning doing damage control before she realizes that I’m _working_ on our special day and- you- you see this?”  
  
He holds up the bakery box by the twine wrapped securely around it, completely oblivious to the thinning patience of his audience.  
  
“Two **dozen** mantecados and polvorones from my wife’s favorite bakery. I had to break a few traffic laws to even get there before they closed and _then_ fight an old lady for the last batch. They raised the price since the last time we bought them, too! You wouldn’t _believe_ how much it cost. And after all that, I didn’t wanna just leave them in the car on a hot day to get all stale-“  
  
“ **Sergio**.”  
  
Sergio goes quiet again. The two lackeys exchange an uncomfortable glance both at the rambling and at the admin’s tone.  
  
“Let’s get our business over with then, yeah?” the admin suggests, punctuating every word with a deepening frustration.  
  
“You’re right, you’re right. These illegally obtained goods ain’t gonna sell themselves!”  
  
He laughs lamely. He’s the only one who laughs.  
  
“Uh, give me a second...”  
  
As Sergio hastily sets his baked goods down on a nearby surface covered in tarp and approaches with the case, Curt begins inching away from the stairwell in search of a better angle to observe from. He doesn’t get all that much closer- he doesn’t dare to, just yet- but he uses the large crates and pieces of boat equipment lying around to his advantage in obscuring his movement outward, nearer to the water. Maybe he could try to snap a few pictures of the meeting? No, there’s no way he has enough cover for that. An audio recording, then? Did his pokegear even have that kind of function? Ah, better to forget it and just do his best to remember everything he sees and hears for the report later. Do it the old-fashioned way.  
  
“One fossil coming right up!”  
  
The admin holds out his hand to accept the case, but doesn’t quite make contact before Sergio freezes as though he’s remembered something and shrinks back a bit, dipping his fingers into his shirt pocket to retrieve a small pad and pen.  
  
“Real quick: would you... would you mind signing something for my nephew Marco? I hope you don’t mind, you know, it’s not a- it’s just that he’d _really_ get a kick outta this! He’d never believe me if I told him that I did business with _The_ Darkest and Mysterious-est Admin around! ...and company... It’s okay if-“  
  
_“_ ** _Sergio!_** _”_  
  
Everyone in the room flinches at the admin’s outburst, which is much louder than any of them have ever heard him get. The place falls so silent, except for the distant crowing of wingulls in the rafters and the churning of the pool, that Curt feels compelled to hold his breath until someone breaks this tension. The admin strides right up to Sergio, shattering his personal space, and stares him down in one very intense moment. With a word, he has taken control of the atmosphere itself; Curt understands better than ever now how Mr. Dark and Mysterious might’ve earned his position. The tension lingers a moment longer, then, betraying no hint of humor or amusement whatsoever, the admin says:  
  
“I would be _honored_. But let’s make it quick, though.”  
  
And just like that, everyone can breathe again. One of the lackeys, the disgruntled one, shakes his head and turns to the other one as Sergio fumbles over his pen.  
  
“Y’seein’ that? Did you hear what he called us? ‘And company’. What a horde o’ trubbish... I don’t think I can take it anymore.”  
  
“What are you gonna do?” the other one asks.  
  
The disgruntled lackey doesn’t respond, just grinds his teeth and watches the admin give Sergio his signature. Then something in him snaps and he lurches into motion, paying no attention when the other one starts to say “Wait, don’t-“  
  
“Hey! Sergio, was it?”  
  
Sergio looks back and forth between the admin and this other guy that’s interrupting them, honestly a little afraid of what’s about to transpire. “Y-Yeah, I mean, I’m pretty sure we’ve met before, actually, once or twice...”  
  
“Yeah? Brilliant. You know, I don’t see what you’re puttin’ _him_ up on a pedestal for.” He jabs a thumb in the admin’s direction, who eyes him with the kind of disgust that people might feel when they find a hair in their soup at some dime-a-dozen diner. Strong at first, yes, but the expectation for disappointment was always there and so the feeling is ultimately pointless. Practically inconsequential to the rest of your life- unless you’re the type of person who remembers every hair you’ve ever found in your restaurant food. “He’s impressive, I’ll give you that, but then again we’re just about neck and neck aren’t we, _sir?”_  
  
The admin says nothing.  
  
“So I’d say what you’re lookin’ at is the gang’s **two** most dark and mysterious- agents,” the lackey finishes, placing his hand on the admin’s shoulder in a passive-aggressive attempt at claiming equality.  
  
The fact that he is so short next to the admin’s towering stature really highlights the absurdity of both the claim and the scene, but Sergio nods and plays along because he cannot decide which of them he’s supposed to placate. It should be obvious: the admin is unquestionably terrifying, but on the other hand, this disgruntled lackey of his seems so desperate for validation that to not acknowledge his (admittedly, still pretty impressive) accomplishment would be... rude?  
  
“Oh, nice. The two of you are- are like, friends. Like, partners. That’s cool.”  
  
A forced smile creeps onto the admin’s face. Maybe that hadn’t been the right thing to say.  
  
“Sharpedo!” the admin calls out. “It’s feelin’ a bit dry over here. Help a guy out, eh?”  
  
Before the disgruntled lackey ever stands a chance of reacting, sharpedo suddenly erupts out of the water and- in the split second that it hovers there, facing away from them all- volleys a stream of seawater from its hind jet that goes crashing into him. His scream fades instantly as the force pushes him through the main doors of the vessel area, and Curt has to remind himself not to crane his neck too far beyond cover to follow the sight in fascination and fear. He’s never seen a sharpedo in person before, never beheld its playful ferocity. If he’s being honest with himself... he kind of wants one now.  
  
Though the initial spray went nowhere near the box of pastries, Sergio finds himself reaching over to protect it as much as he can from any of the splash-back as all that water now floods the docks and even reaches as far as where Curt is hiding, spilling back into the pool in its own time. The awe stirring in him turns into irritation when he realizes that the salty water is going to absolutely ruin his shoes, and he can’t step away from it or he’ll make a bunch of noise.  
  
The admin sniffs triumphantly. Behind him, sharpedo has fallen back into the water and breaches the surface again to inspect its work with sharp, keen eyes. It nods at the admin’s thumbs-up, pleased with itself.  
  
“There can only be one, _love_ ,” the admin mutters. He looks over at the other lackey. “Go check on ‘im.”  
  
The other one wastes no time getting out of there.  
  
“Oh, and- tell ‘im that he no longer works for me, will you?”  
  
Sergio laughs at that. Not out of pity or belittlement (maybe a tiny bit out of pity), but it’s a deep, relief-filled sort of laugh that comes from the pit of his stomach. He can only hope that he stays on the admin’s good side.  
  
“Ay, _dios mio,_ there’s bad guys, my man, and then there’s Bad Guys, **my man!** ” he exclaims with a grin, scooting closer to give the admin a light punch on the arm. His grin withers a little when Mr. Dark and Mysterious Admin Guy’s attention turns back to him, his unreadable face stone-set in some unknowable emotion.  
  
“Well,” the admin exhales, “just part o’ the job. And I’ll tell you what...”  
  
He leans in like he’s sharing a funny secret.  
  
“...I _like_ that part. More than I should, probably. But, I really think I’ve found my true calling puttin’ people like that in their place. Don’t need to ask me twice to wallop some poor idiot for the _fun_ of it, so, just as well that I get paid to do it, you know? Hey- _those trainers ain’t gonna beat themselves!”_  
  
“Oh, I see what you- it’s a play on my- what I said before, yeah, yeah,” Sergio chatters, his smile growing faker by the minute.  
  
“M-hm. And I’m **very** good at what I do.”  
  
The admin’s bemused smirk turns plainly serious, and Sergio understands that this statement is directed at him, whether it’s criticism for how the meeting has been progressing thus far or a warning for the future. Or just a threat in general.  
  
“Anyway. Speakin’ of gettin’ paid: come on, let’s sort this out so we can get on with our lives.”  
  
Curt has a decision to make here, and more than a few questions that need answering. What kind of fossil could it possibly be that makes this ‘boss’ of theirs resort to obtaining it under the table? Fossils are no doubt rare, but most of them... astonishingly uninteresting. A hip bone or a partial skull at best. So this one must be something special- and small, if it can fit in a handheld case.  
  
He could make a move for the case if he wanted to, now that half of the threat has been taken care of for him. He’s assuming the agency gave him at least one electric type (they still know where he lives, of course they know which pokemon types he’s trained to handle) that could easily manage even a formidable-looking water type. He still hasn’t figured out _what_ he has aside from his personal pokemon, but he’d be willing to make a gamble. Except. That isn’t his mission. His mission involves sitting on the sidelines and watching the interesting stuff play out in front of him, which Curt sees now he probably should’ve taken as an insult, not a courtesy. The first day back on the job wasn’t meant to be one of flaunted talent and relived glory; first days are for paperwork and showing the higher-ups that you can do **anything** **at all.**  
  
So... what? Should he tail Mr. Dark and Mysterious to see where he goes next, to find another hideout or even the headquarters and the boss of the whole thing? Or is that a grade above his current assignment too? Then again, wouldn’t he be neglecting the lead by letting them go? He’s the only witness to what’s happening right now. It’s not like- well, these people aren’t gonna _spy on themselves,_ are they? Somebody has to find out what’s going on, and follow the trail, and at the moment it looks that that somebody has to be him. If not Curt, who else?  
  
At that exact moment, as his focus darts around the room searching for whatever will help him cement his decision, that’s when he notices a figure slowly creeping out from the other stairwell on the opposite side of the double doors. She has striking red hair and a stern, unflinching composure that leaves Curt wondering where in the world she even came from. What is she doing here? She looks like a librarian that decided to join a motorcycle club _yesterday_ , and adding her steely gaze to the equation, Curt could imagine her also getting promptly kicked out of said club for being too intense about it. But then he notices that she hasn’t stopped advancing on Sergio and the admin, and he can’t believe his eyes. Is she seriously about to-  
  
“Freeze!” the woman shouts, hopping out of the shadows with her pokeball already ejecting a strange snowflake-shaped pokemon that Curt has definitely never seen before. “Hands where I can see them, both of you!”  
  
They do as she demands, the admin looking none too pleased.  
  
“That was _quick_ ,” he starts to say before she tells him to shut his mouth. She points at Sergio.  
  
“You, get out. This doesn’t concern you.”  
  
Her knowledge of this meeting, her sheer audacity, the foreign pokemon and foreign accent- Russian, Curt can deduce that much at least- all of it suggests she didn’t simply come from the ether. She has to be aligned with someone. _Friend, or foe?_ And what is Curt gonna do about it one way or the other?  
  
“Hey now, I’ve got business with this man,” the admin speaks up, putting a hand on Sergio’s shoulder to prevent him from doing as she says. “And our business doesn’t concern **you** , actually.”  
  
“I don’t care what your business is, I’m not leaving until I destroy you in battle!”  
  
Oh no, she’s gonna get walloped. Curt doesn’t stop himself in time to consider the ramifications when he breaks cover and stumbles forward, wet socks squelching unpleasantly.  
  
“ _I- second that-_! I- I second that motion,” he announces, and pulls a random pokemon from his belt.  
  
Sergio and the redhead regard him with mild confusion as though he’s just shown up to a party he wasn’t invited to. Which is true, in a way. The admin, however, slowly turns around to direct a truly searing scowl at him, one that Curt can feel _through_ the dark-tinted diver’s goggles.  
  
“ **You**.”  
  
Sergio’s eyes suddenly light up with recognition.  
  
“Is that- is that _agent Curt Mega??_ Wow man, that is one _mangy_ face fiasco! Yikes, you kissing any girls with that thing?”  
  
Curt just stares at him in bewilderment.  
  
“Sorry, sorry. I just can’t believe it: the most famous spy in the world busting my secret deal! Wou- Would you mind signing something for my-“  
  
“This ain’t the time for that!“ the admin heatedly interjects. Splashing noises growing louder from Curt’s right side remind him that he has stepped into a fight without a fighter, and so he tosses forth the pokeball in his hand, releasing...  
  
...a joltik?  
  
Oh no, _he’s_ gonna get walloped.  
  
The puny thing scampers in place, turning this way and that to assess the situation it’s been brought out for, but when it receives no instructions nor finds any opportunity for stealth here in the middle of the dock- _which is its sole purpose because the agency gave Curt **precisely what he’d need for a stealth-based excursion-**_ it falters under the scrutiny of so many eyes and dashes onto Curt’s shoe to hide in his pant leg.  
  
“Agh- stop, that tickles! Come on, be brave. Be brave!”  
  
Mr. Dark and Mysterious breaks into a mad dash towards the pool; the redhead and her snowflake thing want to chase after him but are cut off by Curt flinging his joltik at the dock railing.  
  
“Yes! Go! Show me what you got!” Curt eggs it on.  
  
Joltik lands on the rail, sees the sharpedo gnashing its teeth, and just starts lobbing balls of electricity at it in a frenzied panic. Sharpedo dodges every single one- not even with the aid of any special move, but purely in how much faster it is than joltik’s attacks. It stops for a brief moment as the admin leaps onto its back.  
  
“My turn,” is all the warning Curt gets before sharpedo turns away and rears up to shoot more devastating water at them. He barely manages to return joltik to its pokeball in time for half of the water to crash against the railing and the side of the pool, the rest of it drenching Curt from the stomach down. The propulsion pushes sharpedo far enough away from the docks that the redhead and her pokemon can no longer feasibly engage. She runs up to the railing and grips the bent metal with angry hands.  
  
The admin looks back to them, pointing at Curt specifically. “This ain’t over between you and me,” he growls, then slips a breather into his mouth and disappears into the ocean with his sharpedo.  
  
“Hey, I thought we weren’t finished here, guy!” Sergio shouts after him at the same time that Curt shouts “Hey! You can’t just- run away from a... battle...”  
  
But the only remaining evidence of the admin’s presence is the gently expanding ripples leading out beyond the metal gate, until that also fades to nothing. This is _not_ how this mission was supposed to go and Curt hasn’t yet felt that fact sinking into him like rocks in mud, but it will. The redhead has composed herself entirely by the time Curt turns around. It doesn’t even look like she was touched by the water at all, which is just another kick in the shin for him. She sets her sights on Sergio next.  
  
“Sorry, but it looks like we _are_ finished-“  
  
“-here!” Curt interrupts, needing to retain some mote of his competence or the illusion thereof. “Yeah, we’re- We’re finished here.”  
  
Sergio sighs. His whole face and body language towards Curt is different already, hardly two minutes after meeting him. Worse still: he has a knowledge of Curt’s past work to judge him by, and undoubtedly, he is.  
  
“I thought you’d be...” He gestures to Curt’s general everywhere. “...like, _taller_ , you know? I mean, I don’t know man, it’s like...”  
  
No, no, no, Curt is not in the mood to put up with being kicked while he’s down. He brushes past Sergio, who instinctively tilts half his body away in order to keep the fossil case out of reach- but that isn’t what Curt’s reaching for. To Sergio’s horror, Curt snatches the bakery box and shoves his joltik’s pokeball so hard against it that the flimsy cardboard starts to buckle.  
  
“ _Ay dios mio,_ what are you doing!?”  
  
“Whatever’s in here is gonna be bug food if you don’t start talking. Who are you working for? _Who ordered the fossil?”_  
  
“I don’t know! I _swear!_ Please, I’m no one, this was just another job for me. Nothing special.”  
  
Curt holds up the box a little higher, puts his finger on the pokeball’s release button in an obvious way; the look on Sergio’s face gets more desperate.  
  
“Don’t do it! I’m telling you, I don’t know anything! I don’t even know what kind of pokemon the fossil is, or used to be. No one I’ve talked to has been able to identify it. That’s it! Just- _please_ , you don’t gotta ruin my anniversary over this. I’m **begging** you. Have a heart...”  
  
And Sergio does beg. He actually does drop to his knees and clasps his hands together to _grovel_ for Curt’s mercy, the fossil case resting forgotten on the ground beside him. This man is a criminal with criminal connections, whose business it is to peddle to other criminals, whose friends are probably criminals too. This man... is a husband with a family, whose business keeps them taken care of, whose wife is waiting for him so they can celebrate their love on their ‘special day’, as Sergio had put it. The old Curt wouldn’t have hesitated to ruin a criminal’s day (or life), no stopping to care an ounce about the person behind it. But this... Curt hates this. Criminal or not, Sergio begging like this doesn’t make Curt feel justified or superior. It makes him a bully. Besides, it isn’t like Cynthia expects him to be arresting anyone during a recon mission.  
  
Curt really only got half of an answer but he goes ahead and counts it as half of a win. Wordlessly, he tosses the box to Sergio, who catches it and is on his feet in one smooth motion. Sergio hunches over in a weird sort of half-bow as he shuffles backwards towards the exit.  
  
“Wow, it was a pleasure to meet you, you guys are great, so uh, have a good one alright?”  
  
That leaves Curt and the redhead standing in the aftermath of failure, the ocean breeze thick with it. The wingulls above simply preen their feathers unconcerned by human affairs. The boats continue to groan and sway, having no affiliations or loyalties one way or the other. But the day is far from over yet; in fact, it’s only about 1 pm.  
  
“Welp, this has been fun,” Curt says, “but I’d better beat it before anybody comes back.”  
  
They both grab the handle of the fossil case simultaneously, which turns into a tug-of-war contest as they stare each other down.  
  
“You are mistaken. _I_ will be the one beating it.”  
  
He laughs in her face- a dramatic,  obnoxious noise so that it’s obvious he didn’t find that funny- and tugs the case closer to himself.  
  
“Quit _playing around.”_  
  
She yanks it back to her side.  
  
“This isn’t a game to me.”  
  
He pulls even harder, but he can’t get her to let go even when the force he uses nearly causes them to bash their faces together. She is surprisingly strong. Or maybe Curt isn’t as strong as he used to be.  
  
“Listen to me, if I don’t go back to my superiors with something substantial, I’m gonna look like a total _fool_ , so help a guy out, eh?”  
  
The redhead clicks her tongue and pinches his cheek patronizingly. “Oh, but sweetheart: you already look like a fool.”  
  
She digs her heel into his foot; the shock of sudden pain loosens Curt’s grip enough for her to wrench it free from his hand and make a getaway- but it also makes him drop his pokeball, unintentionally releasing joltik onto the back of her jacket. Not noticing, she gives her pokemon a command in Russian, and a beam of ice fires out at him from its center before he can recover _,_ creating a line of ice between the two of them for his wet shoes to get stuck on while she absconds with his best chance of figuring out what his next move should be. By the time he pries his shoes from the ice, he knows it’s too late to go after her. More impressive failures to bring home to mom. He doubles over against the frame of a small forklift and catches his breath.  
  
Something tickles his ankle.  
  
“What!?” Curt snaps.  
  
To joltik’s credit, it only cowers a little bit. Then Curt sees the thing it was trying to stuff inside his shoe: a crisp white business card that looks recently acquired. And **fancy**. It reads:  
  
_“The Monte-Carlo Casino and Hotel?_ Where did you get this?”  
  
Joltik jumps higher up on Curt’s pant leg to crawl over to his pocket.  
  
“That woman’s pocket?”  
  
“Tik!”  
  
_“Located on Monaco Circle within the Kalosian Quarter of-_ this is only a few routes away! Ohh yes, you still **got** it, Mega.”  
  
Curt’s deflated spirit puffs up again almost to bursting in a single leaping heartbeat. On the big-picture side of things, this is everything he wanted. _Forward mobility._ There’s a ‘next move’ for him after all. He could pursue her, discover how she factors into everything, and of course take back the fossil... Not right away, though. He has to follow the process and not screw up any more than he already has if he wants to stand any chance at spinning the results of this mission as a positive. So, no running off on his own just yet: it’s time to return to the agency for mission debriefing. After he changes his pants.  
  
As he limps stealthily out of the building back into the big wide world, the ever-approaching future crawls along one second at a time like clouds engaged in an agonizingly patient reveal of the sun. And as we inch closer to what could be considered inevitability between Curt and his two new mysteries- the redhead who’s on a bus heading out of the city, (rightfully) wary of being tailed, and the Dark and Mysterious Admin who comes ashore miles away from the docks to call in an update he knows his boss won’t be happy about- so too must we consider the past from which this uncertain present forms, the atmospheric soup of choices in history that informs the composition of the horizon yet was at one point an uncertainty as well. One moment in particular would darken Curt’s skies and threaten an unending storm for years to come.  
  
=  
  
_“You know I’d never let you down.”_  
  
_Mega said those words with such an easy conviction that underscored this and all his actions. It was the kind of remark that went down smooth, unchallenged, because rarely had it ever **not** been true. The two of them had enough experience under their belts to justify (in Mega’s opinion) the kind of show they put on for each other, the fun they allowed themselves to have in a high-stakes job like this one. So that’s why Carvour thought nothing of that cheesy little line at first, accepting it with the same ease in which Mega had uttered it. That’s why he’d merely hummed dryly as they released all their pokemon for one giant mess of a battle, commands and attacks being flung around the crowded area just a few degrees shy of total chaos. That’s why Mega was not as careful with where to direct his pokemon’s electricity as he maybe- _unquestionably _should’ve been._  
  
_A stray bolt streaked by worryingly close to Carvour’s face; on instinct, he took a step back, but what he planted his foot on was not stable ground. It was Mega’s carelessly discarded lemonade bottle. He stumbled backwards even more until his lower back slammed into the mezzanine’s railing and the topmost bar snapped out of alignment, condemning him to his fate._  
  
_Mega screamed his partner’s name in vain. He could only watch Carvour disappear over the edge, cut off from potentially reaching him by trainers and pokemon who were simply in the wrong position at the worst time. A few of them abandoned the battle to crowd around the broken rail and peer down, grim unease hanging over all of them. The very air seemed like it had been sucked out of the room. Nothing else mattered. Not the mission, the evidence, the consequences- none of it._  
  
_And now he had a terrible decision to make, and what made it terrible was that he already knew what he had to do. It only took a second to read the room: half of his and Carvour’s pokemon were down for the count, many of his opponents were momentarily distracted, and he had a clear line to the exit by some fluke of the enemy’s scattered formation. There was no way on earth he would be able to fight his way out of this mess alone. There was no way that anyone was going to let him collect his friend and walk out of here freely after the trouble they’d caused. There was no time to deliberate a better option._  
  
_He returned his remaining pokemon to its ball and ran. By the time Carvour’s conscious pokemon saw him barreling through the door and tried to follow him, he was halfway down the hall and the door was already slamming shut in their faces. He knew he’d just abandoned them in the heart of enemy territory, but Carvour kept a strong, competent team: Mega had to hope that they could take care of themselves. Nevermind that one of them was unconscious in there... No, he had to hope. As hard as that was to do right now, he had to- he couldn’t. That was_ not _how the mission was supposed to go and he felt that fact sinking into him like the chill from his damp clothes. He carried that chill with him all the way back to the agency, all through his travesty of a debriefing, and then all the way home to mom, long after his actual clothes had dried._  
  
Curt’s dreams were not kind to him. For the first week or so after that, he couldn’t help but to relive the memory of Owen falling any time he closed his eyes. Sometimes it was himself falling instead, falling into deep red darkness that stretched impossibly long. To combat this, he frequently forced himself to stay awake til the breaking of daylight through his blinds and the irresistible haze of sleep deprivation shut his body down for him. It helped, a little, but sleep provided no escape from the guilt and pain that haunted him. A piece of himself had remained behind in that mournful place along with Owen and the task they’d failed to accomplish. It wasn’t solely one thing, but rather a jumble of things he suddenly didn’t know how to do as well anymore. Trust himself. Take care of himself. Soon Agent Curt Mega was just a name in a classified file for some pencil pusher to deal with, or on an ID badge in Cynthia’s junk drawer. The locked one, hopefully.  
  
He still remembers the professional neutrality of the agency’s lobby, which hasn’t changed at all since he last set foot in here. Stepping through the rotating doors and beyond the metal detectors legitimately feels like slowly traveling into the past. Even the smell of the paperwork hits his nose just right. Yeah, some places are so easy to come back to- and he won’t deny that he’s missed being here. One of the receptionists checks his ID (mercifully saying nothing about the scribbles obscuring half of his image) and directs him to the employee elevator. He’s on a different floor than before, stationed at a different desk, surrounded by different people. Maybe he kind of recognizes _some_ of them, but if they recognize Curt at all they don’t mention it. Whether it’s because everyone is busy enough with their own things to bother paying any mind to a newcomer or it’s because some of them **do** recognize him and are intentionally avoiding him, the reason for it doesn’t matter more than the fact that he’s able to make a beeline for his workstation with minimal stiff pleasantries (but plenty of eyes on him). He settles in and begins filling out some of the forms that are already neatly compiled and waiting for him. This is the less exciting aspect of the job that they tend to gloss over in the recruitment seminars.  
  
A short while later, the sound of his desk phone ringing snaps him out of focus; the person on the other end instructs him to report to another room on another floor for his debriefing. He stretches a bit, shoves his incomplete documents back into the pile, and does as he’s told. On the trip down to the appropriate floor, he talks to no one and uses the silence to practice how he’s going to phrase his answers. _Positivity. He has to stay positive._ The elevator squeaks open to clusters of cubicles on one side and an array of doors that look exactly the same on the other side. His assigned room’s door has been left slightly ajar as an invitation, so he enters without knocking.  
  
Coming face to face with a kadabra throws him for a loop. In the past, debriefings were typically held by one or two intelligence officers, maybe even a psychologist (if it was deemed necessary). But he only sees a pokemon and one of the scientists from the pokemon research and training division, who is presumably its handler.  
  
“Oh, uh, is this- the right room?”  
  
The scientist gives him the tiniest, most almost-not-even-there courtesy smile. “Well, let’s see: are you Curt Mega?”  
  
“Yeah, that's me.”  
  
“Fantastic. I’m Dr. Larch and I will be conducting your de-b today. If you’ll have a seat, we can go ahead and get started.”  
  
Curt sits.  
  
“So... This is your first time back in a while, I see. Are you familiar at all with the role of psychic pokemon in these kinds of meetings?”  
  
“ _No,_ this is definitely- this would be a first for me.”  
  
“Sure, sure. Well, don’t worry about kadabra over there. It’s going to stay where it is and just read some of your thoughts and emotions to make sure we’re getting as accurate a testimony as possible. If there’s any discrepancies, it’ll let me know so that I can ask better questions. That’s all.”  
  
My, how the times are changing. Curt takes a deep breath to steady his mood- _remember, be positive-_ and they proceed. It’s really not so wildly different than what he’s used to. The set of questions that he has to answer is basically the same, except after each response Dr. Larch will look over at kadabra and wait for an affirmative or negative response. If kadabra nods, they move on. If kadabra shakes its head, Dr. Larch presses for more or new information using a different set of questions. The meeting only takes about an hour to cover the entirety of what occurred during his mission. Curt walks out of that room feeling pretty good about the amount and quality of his intel, and, judging himself solely based on how few follow-up questions he’d been asked, he thinks Cynthia just might agree. Less follow-up questions, less discrepancies, is _good_ , right? Because he answered the questions correctly? ...Is that how that works? Whatever.  
  
He starts rethinking his personal assessment when, two hours later, he gets another call telling him that Cynthia wants to see him in her office.  
  
She never requests his presence to express how _happy_ she is with him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for reading. any continued interest in this means a lot to me
> 
> ===
> 
> i'm so excited to be introducing more of the characters, action and plot. now we're gettin into the MEAT fellas. if you're vegan its butternut squash
> 
> uh but yeah so the pokemon that 'the redhead' (tatiana) has is a cryogonal! in the future i'd like to go a bit more in depth about each person's pokemon team and my reasoning for them down here in the end-of-chapter notes. once i reveal all of them, though. that makes the most sense to me. i've seriously put hours of research into picking the teams, whoops haha
> 
> (larch is not a reference or anything. just a type of tree that hasnt already been used in pokemon games yet)


End file.
